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Obituary: Dr. George Hogle, 100, advocate for peace

He was a 50-year resident of Woodside

by
Dave Boyce / Almanac

Dr. George Hogle

On April 14, 2015, the Woodside Town Council issued a proclamation to honor 50-year resident Dr. George Hollister Hogle, a psychiatrist, world traveler and advocate for peace and against nuclear weapons, in celebration of his recent 100th birthday. Dr. Hogle died on Nov. 28, 2015, at home in the company of his family.

He attended St. Paul's, a boarding school in New Hampshire, and graduated from Yale University, where he majored in engineering but developed an interest in liberal arts and politics.

He worked as an assayer for a gold mine and at the New York Stock Exchange. When World War II broke out in Europe, he joined the Quakers and the War Resisters League and became a conscientious objector.

The government assigned him to relief work in France but that program was canceled and he was reassigned to a Massachusetts hospital as a test subject to determine the toxicity of new anti-malarial drugs. He felt rewarded by his participation in this program and the experience led him to an interest in medicine, relatives said.

After the war, as a member of the American Friends Service Committee, he did relief work in Koblenz, Germany. While in Europe, he developed an interest in psychiatry after meeting with noted psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Back the United States, Mr. Hogle earned a medical degree from Columbia University and met his future wife, Lois Crozier, with whom he had three children. The family moved to England, where Dr. Hogle studied with Jungian analyst Gerhard Adler.

When the family relocated to California, Dr. Hogle associated himself with Stanford University Medical School and the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where he served for a time as president. He began a private practice in Palo Alto and, in 1974, became an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford.

Dr. Hogle divorced in 1965 and in 1966 married Ann Meilstrup Raymond. The couple was jailed briefly in Santa Rita in 1967 in connection with a Vietnam War protest. Writing in 2006, Dr. Hogle noted his increasing skepticism of powerful men in connection with the advent of the nuclear bomb. "I submit that more and more women in leadership roles everywhere could benefit the world more than anyone could imagine," he wrote.

The couple traveled the world with their combined family of six children, including a trip on a Russian icebreaker. Dr. Hogle was an active skier into his 80s, learned to use a computer and a smart phone in his 90s, loved classical music and opera, and words -- whether playing Scrabble or reading the newspaper. He was a fan of the San Francisco Giants and dark chocolate.

Dr. Hogle is survived by his wife Ann; children Allan, Steve and Francie; step-children T.M. Raymond, Megan Aguilar and Kit Colman; six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.